1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus for automatically mounting chip type circuit elements on printed circuit boards, and more particularly to an automatic mounting apparatus for automatically carrying out the removal of individual chip type circuit elements such as condensers, resistors or the like from a tape having the chip type circuit elements held thereon in a manner to be arranged in a row in the longitudinal direction thereof (hereinafter referred to as "chip tape"), and the mounting of one chip type circuit element on each printed circuit board.
2. Description of the Prior Art
An automatic mounting apparatus of such type is generally constructed in a manner to allow a mounting head to individually remove or extract chip type circuit elements from a chip tape and mount the chip type circuit elements on printed circuit boards. However, a conventional automatic mounting apparatus has a disadvantage that the structure is necessarily complicated for the following reasons. First, a mounting head includes a vacuum nozzle for removing a chip type circuit element from a chip tape by suction, and clamping claw means for clamping the chip type circuit element sucked by the vacuum nozzle to mount it on a printed circuit board. Also, the mounting head must be mounted to be vertically movable, because it is required to bring the head to the chip tape and printed circuit boad when a chip type circuit element is sucked by the vacuum nozzle and mounted on the printed circuit board by the clamping claw means. In addition, the mounting head is also required to be horizontally reciprocated between the position at which chip type circuit elements are to be removed from the chip tape (chip type circuit element removing position) and the position at which those are to be mounted on printed circuit boards (chip type circuit element mounting position). Further, the conventional apparatus requires, in addition to the above-mentioned driving mechanism for the mounting head, a driving mechanism for moving an empty chip tape from which chip type circuit elements have been removed to the position at which additional chip type circuit elements are to be charged thereon. Furthermore, the prior art apparatus needs a mechanism for synchronizing such move of the empty chip tape with the return of the mounting head to the position at which the additional chip type circuit elements are to be successively removed from the chip tape.
Thus, it will be noted that the prior art automatic mounting apparatus is substantially complicated in structure, and this results in the manufacturing cost being significantly increased.